Leopold I of Belgium

King Leopold I of Belgium (16 December 1790-10 December 1865) was the King of Belgium from 21 July 1831 to 10 December 1865, succeeding regent Erasme Louis Surlet de Chokier and preceding King Leopold II of Belgium.

Biography
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was the son of Duke Francis of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Augusta Reuss-Ebersdorf, two nobles from Germany. He was born on 16 December 1790 in Ehrenburg Palace, Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Leopold was made a colonel of the Izmaylovsky Guards Regiment in the Russian Empire at the age of 5 in 1795, a mere infant. In 1802, he was made a Major-General at the age of 12, and in 1806 he lived in Paris, First French Empire after French troops occupied his home country. He refused an offer from Emperor Napoleon to make him an adjutant, and he joined the Imperial Russian Army. At the Battle of Kulm on 29-30 August 1813, he commanded a cuirassier division and became a Lieutenant-General in 1815 at the age of 25.

On 2 May 1816 he married Charlotte of Wales, daughter of the future George IV of Britain, and was made a Field Marshal of the United Kingdom and a Knight of the Garter. His wife died on 6 November 1817 after delivering a stillborn son the day earlier, although he was given the title "Royal Highness". After the Greek War of Independence, he was offered the throne of the new Kingdom of Greece by the Allied Powers, but he did not want to come off as a propped-up King to those who did not want him to rule, and he also disagreed with giving Aetolia to the Ottoman Empire. On 21 May 1830 he refused the title, and it instead went to Otto of Bavaria.

In 1830, he had another chance to become a king. Newly-independent Belgium asked him to be their first King, and on 21 July 1831 he swore allegiance to the constitution and was made King of Belgium. On 2 August 1831, the Netherlands invaded, and he fought the Dutch until 1839, when the 1839 Treaty of London ended the Dutch Restoration of Order to the Belgian Provinces. On 5 May 1835 he built the first railroad in continental Europe from Brussels to Mechelen, and he later became an advisor to his niece Queen Victoria of Britain, although she became independent very early in her reign. Leopold died in 1865, and was succeeded by his second son Leopold.